iOS Gmail API: Timeout interval and RPC vs RESTful implementation

Question

The Gmail iOS API under the hood appears to be creating 'POST' requested with a payload that specifies an action. So for example if I want to get a single message by ID, I would expect (at least since the documentation on the API specifies it) that I would create a GET request with the correct URL schema. Instead the Gmail iOS implementation does not and utilizes more of an RPC approach. Unfortunately this means all POST requests have a default timeout of 240 seconds and cannot be changed, apparently an iOS bug/weird implementation. I can create a timer and cancel the request but why not make the implementation RESTful?

Answer 1

Yes, this is a quark with the Google iOS client libraries in general--they do not follow the standard REST semantics of the APIs like all the other client libraries use. I imagine due to some limitation in iOS. In any case, https://code.google.com/p/google-api-objectivec-client/ would be the best place to read more about it, discuss and file bugs. (Not specific to the gmail-api.)

Answer 2

The library was written to create JSON-RPC requests because those have always supported a batch request model. A mechanism for batch REST requests was added much later to Google's JSON API servers.

The timeout issue on POSTs was resolved in iOS 6, according to discussions online like this.

The project site does have links to the library's discussion group and issue tracker.